It was very late by the time Chasida finally went to bed, sometime between two and three in the morning. She got into her bed, but not before she made sure all the shutters were closed and the door was locked. No, she wasn’t afraid to sleep alone on the ground floor; nevertheless, she was happy that this was her final night home alone. Tomorrow her parents would come back, and the house would return to normal.

A heavy silence hung in the air as she lay her head down on the pillow. She had a full day ahead of her tomorrow. She had to clean the house before her parents returned, help them unpack, and then prepare for the annual visit of the Blochs, who came every summer. Whenever her brother-in-law Chanoch returned to Eretz Yisrael, he liked to come to Bnei Brak, to breathe in the atmosphere he loved and to feel a bit of what he called “authentic Eretz Yisrael” in his bones. So they would be arriving tomorrow for Shabbos and would stay for a few days afterward, until Shoshi would decide that their mother looked exhausted, and the kids would announce that they were bored. At that point, the Blochs would pack up and return to Yerucham.

Chasida closed her eyes. She had so much to do the next day—she had to get up in less than five hours! So why wasn’t she asleep now?

But although her eyes were closed, she still saw things very clearly. Figures flitted through her mind, laughing and talking, arguing and fuming about those endless arguments that had been spawned by Eliyahu’s illogical proposal.

He had stood in the dining room, pale with fury. “Aren’t you ashamed?” he had asked Yitzchak and her. “What are you trying to say, that Kobi will pay me for this?” Keep Reading…

Although it was Thursday, the yellow drops of ices that dribbled onto the floor did not bother Shoshi. She would just run a mop over the floor before they left for Bnei Brak tomorrow. Zevi stood in one corner of the dining room, observing his family. Something in his expression made it clear that his thoughts were very far away, but she had no idea where they were. Since coming home a few days ago, he seemed a bit preoccupied.

“Zevi?”

He lowered his eyes toward his mother, who was seated on the sofa. His father sat at the head of the table as Shloimy proudly showed him his alef-beis cards. Shloimy sucked the end of the soggy popsicle stick and turned to look at Zevi.

“You didn’t get an ices!” he said, understanding dawning on him. “Do you want one, too?”

Zevi smiled at him, and his mother tried again. “What are you dreaming about, Zevi’le?”

“Nothing special.” Only about strange people who have taken an interest in me lately, and Abba might know who they are but doesn’t want to tell me. “I think I’ll go to shul to learn a bit.”

As he headed for the door, the telephone in the hallway rang. Zevi answered it. An unfamiliar man’s voice asked if this was the Bloch residence, and then asked to speak to his mother. Then the man changed his mind and asked for his father.

Zevi raised an eyebrow and turned toward the dining room. “Abba?”

Chanoch stood up.

“Someone wants you on the phone.”

Chanoch waved as Zevi left the house, and picked up the receiver that Zevi had put on the wooden shelf.

“Hello?” he said into the phone, smiling at Shloimy, who had followed him into the hall, unwilling to give up a single minute of precious Abba-time.

“Hello,” the anonymous voice said. “Chanoch?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Eliyahu. Eliyahu Katz.” Keep Reading…

“My sister’s husband left town right after Pesach and just returned this week. So you can understand why she didn’t want to leave the house for no special reason. If she would be able to visit my parents, that would have been a good reason. But if they’re not here, and it’s only me…”

Shevi and Elinor didn’t respond. One candle went out with a little pop, leaving behind a scented, yellow waxy residue. Chasida asked if either of them wanted some chocolate milk, and tried to get them to eat the last two calzones, but both Shevi and Elinor declined.

“If you think I can eat another thing after all this,” Elinor declared, “then you are majorly mistaken. Shevi, no dinner tonight, okay?”

Shevi smiled thinly in response. Chasida puttered around them like a big, generous bird who couldn’t sit still for a single moment—but only Shevi seemed to pick up on the loneliness in the aging nest. Miri gurgled on the rug that their good neighbor had spread on the floor for her; there was no expecting her to understand anything. And Elinor was also too young to understand. Not quite like Miri, but young nevertheless.

Chasida had prepared a fancy meal for her sister. Alone at home, she had cooked, fried, and baked industriously. She’d decorated the room with a youthful flair and had anxiously awaited the moment when her twin would arrive and they’d be able to spend some time together. But then her sister had informed her that she wasn’t coming. Their parents weren’t home; it was only Chasida there, and for only Chasida, it didn’t pay for Shoshi to leave her house and her husband who had just come home. And Chasida was left to eat everything she had prepared, along with her two guests, the oldest of which was about half her age. Keep Reading…

“Eliad, how nice to see you!” Shevi’s mother hugged her son. “How are you doing?”

“Great,” he said as he lowered his huge rucksack to the floor. “Where’s Abba?”

“In Yokne’am. Do you want to take a drive over there to see his work?” she asked as she walked toward the kitchen while motioning for him to follow.

“Oh, no, Ima. I came just to rest. No trips, no jaunts, no shopping, nothing. Just to see you and the family for a bit.”

“We’re thrilled,” his mother said from the depths of the refrigerator. “Some orange juice, Eliad?” She suddenly stood up straight. “Oh!” she said, squeezing her eyes shut and slapping her hand against her forehead. “Did I tell you about my exhibit?”

“You did,” he replied.

“Well, I’m flying this evening to Belgium for it.”

“This evening?” He made no effort to hide his disappointment. “The night I come home?”

His mother only nodded in response.

“Well, whatever,” he said, watching as she bent back over into the fridge. “I hope that Abba doesn’t have any plans to disappear abroad in honor of my little vacation.” Keep Reading…

Half an hour after Zevi left the house, Zalman and Minda got ready to leave as well.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Chasi?” her father asked again. “The store is not all that busy. We can close it for three days.”

“Thanks, Abba,” Chasida replied as she thumbed through the daily paper. “But I prefer to stay home. I know that Yitzchak and Faigy would be happy to have me, but I really want to stay here.”

“Something secret going on here that I don’t know about?” Her mother laughed as she ran a brush through her short gray wig. She examined her reflection in the mirror. “You’ll rest well, Chasida’le, won’t you? And eat what I left you in the refrigerator. You won’t do anything silly, will you?”

“I won’t.” Chasida put the paper down on the couch, but it slipped to the floor; she didn’t bother to bend over to pick it up. Only after a few seconds of silence, broken just by the sound of her mother’s rubber soles pattering around the house, did Chasida pick up the paper.

“What should I tell Mrs. Kurzman, Ima? Do you have an idea for me?”

“Kurzman?” Minda paused in mid-reach for the purple overnight bag. “What, she got back to you?”

“Yes, a while ago.”

“And she has something good for you?” Minda sat down on the edge of the sofa tiredly.

“Blum.” Chasida was terse. “She’s trying again.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember anymore…” Chasida opened the paper across her lap once more, but her eyes were on her mother. “Meanwhile she hasn’t called again. So what do I tell her?”

“She called you about him three weeks ago, right?”

“Around then, yes. We met on the bus. How do you know?”

“Because you’ve been out of sorts and distracted since then,” her mother said softly. “Right, Zalman? Right I told you that something happened to Chasida?”

Zalman held his hat and gazed at it for a few long moments. Then he said, “Yes, you did tell me. So, what do you think, Minda?” Keep Reading…

Only after the bus finally pulled out of the bus stop did Zevi allow himself to relax on the brown and blue patterned seat. He was on the way home, and he had made the bus, even though Savta had been sure he was going to miss it.

His blue tote bag on the seat beside him almost fell as the bus lurched into the next stop—which Zevi remembered as being the last. He pushed the tote back a bit and rested his hand on it, expecting someone to ask him to sit in the seat any second. But no one did. Just two families boarded and found seats other than the one next to him. Zevi leaned back, one hand on his bag and the other on the window pane, which rumbled with the rhythm of the bus’s turning wheels. Small rays of sun bounced off his freckled forearm, but they didn’t warm him at all.

Savta had said he was better off taking his bag onto the bus, and not putting it into the luggage compartment. “Someone could steal it, you know,” she had warned him as he was about to walk out of the house, two minutes after he had hung up with his mother. “And people taking their things off the bus could knock it out by mistake, and it will be left on the road.”

He really didn’t want to take the risk of getting home without his belongings. In all honesty, Zevi could not recall the last time he had lost something, if at all.

In fourth grade, the rebbi had announced to the class at the end of the year that the only one who hadn’t forgotten a notebook or lost a pencil, eraser, book, or his food the whole year, was Zevi Bloch. Some of Zevi’s childhood nightmares were about him forgetting notebooks at home, not finding things, and not having a pen to use, because everything had disappeared from his drawers. But these dreams were odd, because Zevi’s drawers were the neatest in the whole house, and he would carefully prepare what he needed for the next day on the evening before.

“Too careful,” his father would say when he was home, while lovingly pinching the freckled cheek. Once he had asked his son, “What will happen if you forget a pencil once in a while?” Keep Reading…

At three o’clock, as the pale moon began to sink below the horizon, Eliyahu woke up and could not fall back asleep. For many long years he had slept, very deeply. Now the time had come to act, and with him, as always, action didn’t come far after the decision, even if it was difficult or puzzling. Perhaps the fact that Zevi was reasonably tall was what was bothering him. That was a sign that he was toward the end of the growing stage, wasn’t it? And if he had understood Arthur correctly, it was easier to repair the problem when the body had not yet reached its final growth. Perhaps these were the final days when something could still be done, if at all!

And maybe it was his impulsiveness, which had never given him any respite. His Aunt Minda had always said that the moment he decided something, nothing could stop him.

Either way, Eliyahu felt that he had to act. He couldn’t wait, despite the discomfort and awkwardness he knew would be involved. He waited impatiently for another hour to pass, and then got up and went out to the nearest shul where a vasikin minyan was held. He learned a bit, davened, and went back home. Chavi and the girls were up, as they usually were at this early hour. Only the boys’ room was still quiet. Elchanan had to get up for davening already, but he had an alarm clock. He didn’t need his father to wake him. Eliyahu marveled at how mature and responsible the boy was.

“Chavi?” He found her in the kitchen, cutting tomatoes on the blue cutting board as she listened with a sigh to the screams coming from the girls’ room. “Do you know how someone can get from Bnei Brak to Yerucham?”

“From Bnei Brak to Yerucham?” The knife in her hand froze in mid-motion for a second. “I think there are private buses a few times a day. Not too many.”

“Is there a direct bus from here?”

“I don’t think so. I imagine that you can take a bus from the Central Bus Station to Beer Sheva, and from there I’m sure there’s a link to Yerucham.” Keep reading…

Gavriel hadn’t even gotten to “Borei me’orei ha’eish”when the phone began to ring. One ring, followed by another and another. Shevi picked up the receiver, waited the few requisite seconds until the caller would realize that Havdalah was being recited, and then hung up.

Gavriel had hardly finished drinking and making the brachah acharonah when the phone began to ring again. This time, Shevi was at the sink with her hands deep in the suds, so he answered the call.

“Yes, Ima,” Shevi heard him say. “Oh, was it you before? We were just making Havdalah.” He listened for a minute with the familiar expression on his face, and Shevi’s heart sank. “A waste of a call? For who?” He was quiet again. “Oh, we really never thought about it like that. In a lot of places they do this; it’s so that the caller will know that we can’t speak right now.”

Elinor tactfully slipped out of the kitchen. Keep Reading…